In one of the craziest elections in American history, Barack Obama overcame a lack of experience, a funny name, two candidates who are political institutions and the racial divide to become the 44th President of the United States

Sarah Palin

By Nancy GibbsWednesday, Dec. 17, 2008

Christopher Morris / VII for TIME

In the beginning, she winked. "I was just your average hockey mom," she told us by way of introduction, which was a charming diversion from the reality of the most astonishing political debut in modern times. Sarah Palin did indeed show she could play politics as a contact sport; her motherhood did become central to her message. But average? Not in your wildest dreams.

Maybe Sarah was the girl next door once upon a time, but not on the day we met her, back in late August, her 20th wedding anniversary with Todd, the Iron Dog champion. She was not just a governor, but the most popular governor in the country; not just a mom but a mother of five, with a family made for reality TV. And she wasn't just a running mate; she was a one-woman rescue team for the Republican ticket. Largely unknown but suddenly exalted, she was the perfect wide screen onto which people projected pride and prejudice in equal measure: she's fresh, she's phony; an inspiration to women, an insult to them; the bright future of the Republican Party, the cartoon princess of its populist past. She split people then, and they're divided still, and she's the one subplot in this story that remains utterly unresolved.

Hardly anyone saw Palin coming. The newspapers had to tell readers how to pronounce her name. The culture war had gone quiet but had not gone away: conservatives had been searching for a soul mate for ages, and it sure wasn't John McCain; the left was primed for a fight that Barack Obama seemed unwilling to wage. Women, meanwhile, were wondering what comes next: if Hillary Clinton, the wonky workaholic with her legions of fans, could not capture the White House flag, who was next in line? Palin broke it all open, even before she headed out to conquer what she termed the "pro-America parts" of America. She arrived at the bonfire with the tinder stacked high, and somehow it fell to her to be the match.

Those first days gave us the 2008 campaign in miniature, if only we'd known what to look for. "She's exactly who I need," McCain said when he introduced her, sounding like Dr. Frankenstein putting the pieces together, an Evangelical arm, a reformist backbone and, just for good measure, lipstick. The base of his party exulted, and not a moment too soon. McCain was never really one of them: too ironic, too profane, too beloved by the media, a Baptist who'd never been baptized, for heaven's sake. But now John gave them Sarah, and his campaign was born again. "They're beyond ecstatic," said Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition. Rush Limbaugh, who had spent much of the year looking for new ways to clobber McCain, all but sent him flowers. "Palin = Guns, Babies, Jesus," he wrote to Politico, adding, "Home f___ing run."

The reaction of the right was fueled by the response of the left. Democrats were instantly and gleefully appalled that the Republicans would consider a one-term governor qualified to challenge their one-term Senator. She was the welfare-state queen pretending to be the independent frontier gal, the crusader against cronyism who had installed her own courtiers and blackballed her enemies. And who goes to four colleges in six years anyway, and names her children after sports seasons and fishing spots? Right away, before she'd had a chance to take off her coat, the attack was intense, intimate.

The most stunning accusation was not about her experience or intellect or attitude; it was the allegation that she had committed a stupendous moral fraud, faking her infant son Trig's birth to cover up her teen daughter's pregnancy. Throughout the weekend after her selection, the rumor moved from Daily Kos to the Times of London at Internet speed: the fact that it spread as far and as fast as it did signaled just how much the two sides of our cultural divide distrust each other.

When the Palins were forced by the rumors to announce that daughter Bristol was, in fact, currently pregnant and due to be married, it merely replaced one frenzy with another. It's a wonder the nation's servers didn't melt under the strain: the New York Times ran a much e-mailed story observing, "It's the Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition." Given her family situation, the story argued, Palin "has set off a fierce argument among women about whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency and whether she is right to try." A blogger on Jezebel posted "Why Sarah Palin Incites Near-Violent Rage in Normally Reasonable Women." Rudy Giuliani, the thrice-married mayor whose daughter's Facebook profile placed her in Camp Obama, was especially jubilant as he introduced Palin to her party at the Republican Convention: "How dare they question whether Sarah Palin has enough time to spend with her children and be Vice President?'' Giuliani said. "How dare they do that? When do they ever ask a man that question?''

By then, more Americans had decided to tune in to her speech than watched the Olympics' opening ceremonies in Beijing. She emerged onto the stage, and the arena roared its welcome as if she were some kind of conquering hero. She looked out and smiled as she stared her critics down. She sassed them. She stabbed them. She derided the "élites" whose opinions meant nothing to her. Her lipstick joke was all about being tough  your basic well-coiffed pit bull can handle it when Bill Maher calls you a Category 5 moron. And when she finished and the crowd screamed and danced, she twirled across the stage with the baby in her arms, signaling to women everywhere that nothing was going to stop her, and to conservatives everywhere that nothing would make her abort a Down-syndrome baby, and her daughter stood there with her, clutching her boyfriend's hand. The critics who were disgusted by the double standard of a campaign that claimed that Palin's family members were off-limits except when it suited her purposes to invoke them had to consider whether she didn't have the right to brandish a child they said wasn't hers and a daughter they claimed she was ashamed of.